Julius Rosenwald, a former president of Sears, Roebuck and Co., advanced efforts to bring education to African Americans in the South at a time when school funding was scarce, the region had half as much per capita wealth as the rest of the country, a third more children, and the added expense of maintaining a dual system of education. In 1912, after donating heavily to the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, he authorized Dr. Booker T. Washington, president of Tuskegee, to use some of those funds to build schools for African-American students across the South. The Julius Rosenwald Fund was founded in 1917 with the stipulation that it would cease 25 years after Rosenwald’s death. Dr. Fletcher B. Dressler of Peabody College designed functional and attractive plans for a variety of school types. In Southside Virginia, these schools were mainly one-, two-, or three-room frame buildings with siding, usually painted gray-blue with white trim around large window spaces, and the larger schools included a community room for gatherings and neighborhood health services. The New Hope School on this site is one of several Rosenwald schools still standing in Cumberland County. Through the Rosenwald Fund, 5,358 modern rural black schools were built in 15 states, with seating for 663,795 pupils at any one time. After spending $22 million, the Rosenwald program officially ended in 1932, and the fund’s records and architectural plans are now archived at Fisk University in Nashville, TN.